Cheshire East recruiting Planners

Cheshire East Council has launched an extensive recruitment campaign as part of its on-going work to improve its planning service.

The planning department, which is the busiest local planning authority in the North West, top five in the UK for major applications and top ten for the volume of planning applications, has been under review over the last six months.

The ongoing review, which has focused on the backlog of planning applications, has also highlighted the pressure the service is under with reduced staffing capacity. This has been impacted by national difficulties in recruiting experienced planners.

As a result, an extensive recruitment campaign has been launched in a bid to attract planning staff at all levels. Work has also begun on improving customer communication -- with a focus on managing everyone's expectations around how long an application takes and improving the website to help people understand the process.

Alongside a committed investment in the service -- with £0.5M allocated in the council's budget -- additional staffing resource has been brought in to help reduce the planning application backlog.

A variety of exciting planning job roles are available at the council. More details can be seen here.